By Tiernan Ray

Shares of hosted, or “cloud computing” software provider NetSuite (N) are up $6.77, or 10%, at $77, after the company this afternoon reportedQ4 revenue and earnings per share that narrowly exceeded analysts’ estimates.

Revenue in the three months ended in December rose 33%, year over year, to $85 million, yielding EPS of 6 cents a share.

In a year that saw Microsoft once again fail to deliver cloud-native ERP solutions, and in a quarter that saw SAP miss their most recent top- and bottom-line forecast as more large enterprises moved to the cloud, NetSuite delivered its best year ever. And we continue to put even more distance between us and our competitors with the introduction of new capabilities like NetSuite SuiteCommerce which transforms operational business systems into customer-facing commerce solutions.

In addition to competing with established enterprise vendors such as those, NetSuite competes with other hosted software vendors such as Workday (WDAY), Salesforce.com (CRM), and ServiceNow (NOW), and Oracle (ORCL) is an investor in the company.

Update: On the call, the company forecast revenue this year of $397 million to $402 million, and EPS of 26 cents to 27 cents. That’s higher than the average $396 million estimate for revenue, but it misses the consensus view for 31 cents profit.

Since that forecast, the stock has cooled a little but is still up $4.97, or 7%, at $75.20.

Update: Regarding Nelson’s remarks about SAP, above, the company was in contact this afternoon to point out the characterization of recent results was not accurate. SAP did not miss its forecast for revenue in the Q4 that it reported on January 23rd. SAP reported full-year software and software-related service revenue of €13.16 billion in IFRS terms (European GAAP) and €13.25 billion in non-IFRS terms. That was better than the revenue outlook provided on October 24th for 10.5% to 12.5% growth in software and services revenue, from the prior-year’s €11.35 billion level.

SAP’s full-year non-IFRS operating profit of €5.21 billion “was slightly below SAP’s non-IFRS operating profit guidance (which was in a range of €5.05 – €5.25 billion at constant currencies),” it said, “due to the company’s continued investments in key innovations as well as the expansion of SAP’s global go-to-market activities.”

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There are 3 comments

JANUARY 31, 2013 5:55 P.M.

85 Million wrote:

Did they say revenue? And he is throwing rocks at Microsoft. Wow.

At least he is going down fighting. But he knows the out come of this battle.

Does NetSuite have a message bus cloud offering? can they spin up servers and disk, and CPU and databases in the cloud?

they have an ERP package in the cloud.

If I was NetSuite I would be big time worried.

JANUARY 31, 2013 6:23 P.M.

MarkD wrote:

Seems to be taking a leaf out of SalesForce exec's book. Slag off Microsoft and at least you'll get coverage. Seemed to have worked (for cverage) but seriously, will not make them the next 500M...

JANUARY 31, 2013 7:07 P.M.

Cw wrote:

Netwho? This must be a joke and a desperate ploy to get a headline. Netwhatever isn't in the same league as Microsoft. MS is the only company in the world with PaaS, SaaS and IaaS. Way to give these posers a headline.

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.